Master of the Senate
The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume III (Part 2 of a 3-Part Recording)
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
£0.00 for first 30 days
LIMITED TIME OFFER
Get 3 months for £0.99/mo
Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.
Master of the Senate
Narrated by:
Grover Gardner
Buy Now for £16.99
-
Narrated by:
-
Grover Gardner
-
By:
-
Robert A. Caro
About this listen
A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of the Last 30 Years
At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done.
It was during these years that all Johnson’s experience—from his Texas Hill Country boyhood to his passionate representation in Congress of his hardscrabble constituents to his tireless construction of a political machine—came to fruition. Caro introduces the story with a dramatic account of the Senate itself: how Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun had made it the center of governmental energy, the forum in which the great issues of the country were thrashed out. And how, by the time Johnson arrived, it had dwindled into a body that merely responded to executive initiatives, all but impervious to the forces of change. Caro anatomizes the genius for political strategy and tactics by which, in an institution that had made the seniority system all-powerful for a century and more, Johnson became Majority Leader after only a single term-the youngest and greatest Senate Leader in our history; how he manipulated the Senate’s hallowed rules and customs and the weaknesses and strengths of his colleagues to change the “unchangeable” Senate from a loose confederation of sovereign senators to a whirring legislative machine under his own iron-fisted control.
Caro demonstrates how Johnson’s political genius enabled him to reconcile the unreconcilable: to retain the support of the southerners who controlled the Senate while earning the trust—or at least the cooperation—of the liberals, led by Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, without whom he could not achieve his goal of winning the presidency. He shows the dark side of Johnson’s ambition: how he proved his loyalty to the great oil barons who had financed his rise to power by ruthlessly destroying the career of the New Dealer who was in charge of regulating them, Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds. And we watch him achieve the impossible: convincing southerners that although he was firmly in their camp as the anointed successor to their leader, Richard Russell, it was essential that they allow him to make some progress toward civil rights. In a breathtaking tour de force, Caro details Johnson’s amazing triumph in maneuvering to passage the first civil rights legislation since 1875.
Master of the Senate, told with an abundance of rich detail that could only have come from Caro’s peerless research, is both a galvanizing portrait of the man himself—the titan of Capital Hill, volcanic, mesmerizing—and a definitive and revelatory study of the workings and personal and legislative power.©2002 Robert A. Caro, Inc.; (P)2002 Books on Tape, Inc.
Listeners also enjoyed...
Sloppy editing is annoying: sentences repeated and the books first few chapters repeat the last few of the first part
Great story sloppy editing
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Forensic!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Mesmerising but editing poor
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Would you listen to Master of the Senate - The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume III (Part 2 of a 3-Part Recording) again? Why?
The book is brilliant, the story fascinating and the narration excellent.Any additional comments?
But the editing of the second part of the three-part audio book is surprisingly poor. On more than a dozen occasions bits of text are repeated as the audio track suddenly doubles back by a few words or even a few sentences. The first part was edited professionally without such errors. It looks like by the time of the second part time or budget was too short to avoid repeatedly making a basic mistake.Great book, great narrator, surprisingly poor edit
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
- Initial chapters repeat from volume 1
- Chapter headings don't line up with when chapters end. As such the chapters laid out are just randomly placed in the text.
- When chapters end in the audiobook they often repeat the last line(s) of the previous "chapter" which is just poor quality in general.
Ultimately great story and enjoy it greatly but it's just unfortunate that such easily fixed mistakes have been made in this volume, it wouldn't even take all that long to rectify if someone did decide to fix it.
Great but really poorly formatted
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.